THE BIRTHING OF TWINS
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Sher­rina Richards story - Part 1

HOUGH PLANS are made and work is done to en­sure those plans come to fruition, life is filled with un­pre­dictable mo­ments, and some­times, one can never truly pre­pare for what is to come. When Sher­rina and her hus­band brought their first child into this world, they thought of wait­ing a num­ber of years be­fore giv­ing her a brother or a sis­ter. How­ever, life had a dif­fer­ent plan, and the change in di­rec­tion brought about chal­lenges that only a re­liance on God’s strength could bring them through.

From a ma­jor ac­ci­dent to emer­gency surg­eries and near-death or­deals, she went through it all.

“When I took the test and I re­alised I was preg­nant, I cried be­cause I wanted to change my job and so many other stuff be­fore hav­ing an­other baby,” she said.

Even though Richards was not ex­tremely happy, she made the de­ci­sion to break the news to her hus­band ro­man­ti­cally.

“I made plans with my brother-in-law, who is a chef, to come over and pre­pare an ex­quis­ite din­ner for me. He and I trans­formed my liv­ing room into a nice fine-din­ing restau­rant and got some mu­sic go­ing. When my hus­band came home from work, he was very sur­prised and kept ask­ing what the oc­ca­sion was, but I just told him I wanted to have a nice din­ner. He wasn’t to­tally con­vinced, but preg­nancy was far­thest from his mind.

“Af­ter we dined, took some pic­tures and talked, he thought that was all to the evening. I then took out a gift bag and gave it to him. He smiled and dug right in. He took out a lit­tle box, opened it, re­moved some dec­o­ra­tions from the top and there it was – the white stick with two red lines. His jaw dropped and re­mained in that po­si­tion for about 30 sec­onds. Then he hugged me tightly and told me how ex­cited he was.”

IN FOR A TREAT

The Richards’ warmed up to the idea of adding a lit­tle one, pos­si­bly a lit­tle boy, to the mix to make the per­fect pair. But they were in for a treat.

“My hus­band and I vis­ited the doc­tor for my first pre­na­tal check-up. While the doc­tor was do­ing the ul­tra­sound, he asked my hus­band if he was sit­ting or stand­ing. So my hus­band an­swered, ‘I’m stand­ing. Why you ask?’. I was ly­ing there won­der­ing the same thing, but be­fore I could give it much thought, the doc­tor said, ‘Be­cause you have two here’. I was like, what? We kept ask­ing the doc­tor if he was sure, over and over, and he kept show­ing us the screen. I got an in­stant headache as I wasn’t ready for one more much less two at the same time. We were so shocked, fright­ened, ter­ri­fied, and yet su­per ex­cited at the same time.”

Mar­ried for ap­prox­i­mately five years, the cou­ple was open­ing doors to a whole new ex­pe­ri­ence for their fam­i­lies.

“My ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther was a twin, but he and his brother passed away many years ago. So, yes, it’s the first set from both sides. Soon af­ter I found out I was preg­nant, I started hav­ing ter­ri­ble all-day sick­nesses. I couldn’t keep any­thing down, even in the wee hours of the morn­ing, I would be up throw­ing up.”

She con­tin­ued, “My doc­tor pre­scribed medicine to ease the vom­it­ing – it was some­what eased, but not all to­gether. I was al­ways ex­hausted, weary, and, over­all, mis­er­able. I couldn’t wait for the first trimester to pass. So when the

sec­ond trimester made its grand en­trance, it was wel­comed as the vom­it­ing eased off to once or twice per day.”

But it was cer­tainly not peaches and cream, and Richards soon had to re­sign her job.

“No sooner had I started en­joy­ing be­ing preg­nant than the fa­tigue re­turned in all its glory. I couldn’t keep up at work as I was con­stantly fall­ing asleep at my desk, reach­ing late as I couldn’t wake up in the morn­ings, no mat­ter how early I went to bed, and even

un­der­per­form­ing.”

Be­cause there were two ba­bies de­pend­ing on her for sus­te­nance, Richards’ body was se­verely un­der pres­sure.

“My doc­tor asked me to do some blood tests, which showed my blood count was re­ally low. That’s when my hus­band and I made the de­ci­sion that it was best if I re­sign and just take it easy at home. So by mid­sec­ond trimester, I was home and it made all the dif­fer­ence in the world. I was sleep­ing a lot more and rarely had any is­sues – not even my feet were swollen un­til about the last month of the preg­nancy, and it was very mild. I was now just fo­cused on get­ting my blood count up.”

PROB­LEMS AHEAD

As one good thing hap­pened, sev­eral hor­ri­ble oc­cur­rences kept hap­pen­ing and they both had to be find­ing so­lu­tions to each new prob­lem. “By the third trimester, the fa­tigue eased off, but my huge belly made me so un­com­fort­able. I was also bat­tling con­stant in­di­ges­tion and fre­quent uri­na­tion. As time was draw­ing closer and it be­came a lot more dif­fi­cult to get around and care for our four year old, we de­cided to let one of my sis­ters come and live with us, which re­ally worked in our favour.” As Richards pre­pared to wel­come new life into the world, her tower of strength, her hus­band, met in a ma­jor ac­ci­dent. How did she deal with it all in ad­di­tion to the nu­mer­ous tri­als that came with each pass­ing day? Next week, we will look at her out­come.

Richards at one point begged God to take her when the pains as­so­ci­ated with be­ing preg­nant with twins be­came too un­bear­able.

The vehicle Richards’ hus­band was driv­ing be­fore it lost con­trol and flipped sev­eral times be­fore land­ing in a ditch four days be­fore the birth of their twins.